- His full name was Donatien Alphonse François, Marquis de Sade. His father was Jean Baptiste François Joseph, Count de Sade and Marie Eléonore de Maillé de Carman, cousin and Lady-in-waiting to the Princess of Condé. His father left the family when Sade was young, and his mother joined a convent. The servants who raised him indulged him, and he became, to put it bluntly, a spoiled brat with a foul temper. After beating up another boy, he was sent to live with his uncle. He didn't behave at school and was often beaten.
- At 14, he went to an elite military academy. By 15, he was a sub-lieutenant and just over a year later, a cornet. He eventually became Colonel of a Dragoon regiment and fought in the Seven Years' War.
- He was married, although it was an arranged marriage for financial reasons rather than a love match. His wife's name was Renée-Pélagie de Montreuil. Needless to say, he cheated on her, even though he was living with her family. He kept a secret apartment for his liaisons. The marriage produced three children, and according to one of Sade's descendants, Sade loved his family and “wrote touching love letters to his wife, his two sons, his daughter.” His wife was described as an accomplice in some of his endeavours, but she eventually divorced him - although she did support him financially while he was residing in an insane asylum.
- He spent nearly half his life in prisons and asylums. His first prison sentence came about after he offered a poor widow a job. She accepted, assuming he wanted a housekeeper. She soon found out her new employer had other ideas. Like tying her up, whipping her and dripping hot wax on her. She eventually escaped by climbing out of a Window. This incident was perhaps the final straw for his mother in law, who obtained a lettre de cachet, an order of arrest and imprisonment from the king, with which Sade could be sent to prison without stated cause and without trial. It was while he was in prison that he started writing novels. He was allowed writing materials and books, and there was probably not much else to do.
- He was imprisoned in the Bastille, up until a few days before it was stormed in 1789. It's possible he even helped stir things up - there's a story which says that on 2 July 1789, he shouted out of his cell window to the crowd outside, "They are killing the prisoners here!" Whether that was part of the reason he was transferred to an insane asylum soon afterwards we'll probably never know. We do know that while he'd been in the Bastille, he'd been writing a novel called Les 120 Journées de Sodome (The 120 Days of Sodom), which he had to leave behind when he was transferred. He hid it in his cell, but assumed it must have been destroyed during the storming of the Bastille. It was found after his death. Although it was banned for its obscene content, the scroll was later bought by a company specialising in rare manuscripts for the equivalent of $7.8 million.
- After his wife divorced him, Sade met a woman called Marie-Constance Quesnet who was separated from her husband and had a six year old son. Their relationship was platonic, but they did live together and Marie-Constance worked to support them. When Sade's life as a free man was brought to an end by Napoleon Bonaparte, who had him arrested again for writing and publishing another obscene novel, she pretended to be his wife, and was allowed to live in the asylum in a room next to his. The two remained close friends until Sade's death in 1814.
- Even at the age of 70, and confined to an asylum, Sade was still at it. He started an intimate relationship with Magdeleine Leclerc, the daughter of one of the nurses. Magdeleine was just 13 at the time. He kept a journal of their relationship, which lasted four years, up to his death. We know from these writings that during the relationship, he taught Magdeleine to read and write.
- During his brief interludes of freedom, Sade did do some things which had nothing to do with sex. He served as president of the Pike Section of Paris, a job which included reviewing practices in hospitals. Up until then, patients had to share beds - it was Sade who made sure each patient had a bed to themselves, and that hospitals were made safer. He also got involved in left-wing politics, writing pamphlets for the revolutionaries, although it's likely his aristocratic background didn't help him here. He opposed capital punishment and was one of the first to broach the subject of abortion for social reasons.
- In his will, he asked that his body should not be opened for any reason whatsoever, that it should remain untouched for 48 hours before being placed in a coffin and buried on his property in Malmaison near Épernon. It was ignored. He was buried at the asylum and later, his skull was removed for phrenological examination. Meanwhile, his one surviving son, Donatien, insisted that all of his father’s unpublished manuscripts be burned. For years, his descendants worked to suppress the scandal, so much so that one descendant, the Comte Xavier de Sade, only found out about his legendary ancestor when approached by a journalist. Xavier then became interested in Sade's work, uncovered a pile of manuscripts which had survived, and worked to get them published.
- Serial killer Ian Brady, who with Myra Hindley carried out torture and murder of children known as the Moors murders in England during the 1960s was said to be fascinated by Sade's work and had a book of excerpts from his novels. Not even the most extreme stuff, according to Sade's biographer Donald Thomas. Hindley claimed Brady would beat her after reading Sade's books.
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